Advocacy & Research

In order to translate educational disengagement research into practice, the NCESE put together the NCESE Building Blocks for Engagement. In this  resource, Dr Eric Dommers distilled evidence-based protective factors that support student engagement, including re-engagement for high-risk students, providing a roadmap for schools interested in improving engagement outcomes. 

The 12 Building Blocks offer an interactive and overlapping suite of strategies targeting all levels: school culture, programs and pedagogical approaches.

Protective factors can help to mitigate risk factors, and like risk factors, they operate at three levels:

(i) the students;
(ii) the family; and
(iii) the school-community context.

At the level of the student, the research tells us that strong-student peer relationships, and positive teacher-student relationships are powerful protective factors for school engagement; along with students having good skills in Social and Emotional Learning, and associated Executive Functions (problem solving, decision making, self-regulation skills), and good interpersonal communication skills. (Blair, C & Raver, C., C, (2017) The Neuroscience of SEL, in Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning, Research and Practice, Durlak, J.A., Domitrovich, C., E Weisberg, R., P., and Gullotta, T., P (Eds) The Guilford Press). Indeed, all these skills contribute significantly to both school engagement, as well as learning and cognitive outcomes. (Cipriano et al, 2023).

At the level of the family, it is clear that explicit and active family support for learning helps to build ‘learning self-efficacy’, motivation, and pro-social relationship building with staff and other students. Links between the family, school and broader community also make a significant positive difference to build students’ levels of interest and engagement in schooling.

At the level of the school and broader community, the evidence indicates that student voice and agency, staff and student health and wellbeing, and strong positive links with community agencies can all make a significant positive difference to students’ levels of engagement and learning motivation with both the formal and informal elements of the school’s programs and culture. (Reeve et al, 2022; Fredricks & Christenson, 2022; Centre on the Developing Child, Harvard University).

Collectively the Building Blocks work to support key triadic reciprocal student outcomes that include learning self-efficacy, social capital, and individual and collective student agency